THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

January 2007, Week Two

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Bush announces "new" policy for Iraq, troop escalation; escalates threatening rhetoric against Iran and Syria

• January 10: Bush goes on primetime television to introduce his "new" plan for Iraq.

  Iraq war and occupation

  "The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me," he says. The centerpiece of his plan includes a wildly unpopular troop escalation of over 21,000 US troops, mostly to be deployed in Baghdad and in Anbar province. (A January 10 AP/Ipsos poll shows 70% of Americans oppose the escalation.) Bush has repeatedly said the plan originated over a month ago with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. In a detailed, skeptical analysis of the plan by Washington Post reporters Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas Ricks, they write, "In going for more troops, Bush is picking an option that seems to have little favor beyond the White House and a handful of hawks on Capitol Hill and in think tanks who have been promoting the idea almost since the time of the invasion." This will actually be the fifth such "surge" of troops into Iraq since the occupation began after the fall of the Hussein regime. The first was an escalation of 15,000, when troops were rotated in and out between December 2003 and April 2004. Then 12,000 more troops were brought in between November 2004 and March 2005. The third, of 22,000 troops, took place between September and December of 2005, and the fourth was "Operation Together Forward," between June and October of 2006. The plan also mentions a number of "benchmarks" that Iraq will have to achieve in the coming months, but there are no provisions to penalize Iraq or withdraq American support should Iraq fail to meet those goals. The Iraqi government rejected similar benchmarks in late 2006.
• Bush makes two startling -- for him -- concessions. He admits that his administration erred in not sending more troops to Iraq earlier, allowing "unacceptable" sectarian violence to erupt throughout Iraq -- "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" -- and says that the plan calls for the complete turnover of responsibility for security to Iraqi forces by November 2007. "Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons," Bush says. "There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents, and there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have." He says the new strategy comes after consultation with his advisers, members of Congress, and allies, and consideration of the recommendations made by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, recommendations that were by and large rejected.
• Bush says, "Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. But victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world: a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people."
• "This is an Iraqi plan and will be Iraqi led," says a senior White House official. "We believe it will fix the problems that plagued earlier efforts." The plan calls for the containment and neutralization of militants in Sadr City, most of whom are aligned with the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a key supporter of Maliki. "People are going to be able to see pretty quickly if the Iraqi's are or are not standing up," says the official. In her meeting with the Senate on January 11, Condoleezza Rice adds, "Iraqis are in the lead; we are supporting them."
• But an analysis by veteran AP diplomatic reporter Anne Gearan says the chances of success for this plan are low, depending as it does on "another new approach, from an Iraqi leader who has failed US expectations at every turn." Gearan writes, "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has failed to deliver the unified government or additional troops he promised. And he's protected his own political footing at the expense of his American sponsors' goals. Condoleezza Rice tells the Senate on January 11 that their doubts about al-Maliki's regime are well founded: "There have been times when they haven't performed in the past." She says she is confident that al-Maliki now knows the stakes and will hold up his end, but Gearan observes, "Bush and his advisers have said much the same thing for months, without much to show for it. Despite pledges from al-Maliki's Shiite-led government for greater cooperation, al-Maliki has stumbled politically while the country fell deeper into chaos and distrust. And he failed to provide promised Iraqi troops last summer as part of a security crackdown in Baghdad that has produced few results. Bush has repeatedly endorsed al-Maliki as a patriot and a strong leader. But at home, al-Maliki is increasingly seen as a partisan Shi'ite politically beholden to the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This time, Bush is apparently banking on al-Maliki's personal assurances, including in a lengthy private conversation last week." Few believe al-Maliki's promise to crack down on al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, since that powerful Shi'ite militia is the centerpiece of his political support, and while al-Maliki has given US forces free rein to battle Sunni militias, he has consistently refused to allow them to go after Shi'ite forces. Gearan notes the now-famous memo from White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley which cast doubt on al-Maliki's sincerity and abilities.
• The additional US troops will be sent to Iraq in phases, with the first deployments beginning in January. To accomplish the plan, the normal tours of duty for soldiers and Marines will be extended. Marines who usually spend seven months in Iraq will be there three or four months longer; soldiers who normally serve for a year will be there up to four months longer. To sustain the increase, the Pentagon is expected to have to activate more National Guard and Reserve units. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he can't not say just how long the buildup would last. "It's viewed as a temporary surge, but I think no one has a really clear idea of how long that might be," he says.
• Possibly the most alarming aspect of the speech is Bush's escalated rhetoric towards Iran and Syria. "These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq," he says. "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." He also notes that he is sending a carrier group to the Persian Gulf, a deployment hard to justify in terms of the Iraqi occupation but a necessary move if Bush intends to attack Iran. The next day, White House press secretary Tony Snow tries to disavow Bush's belligerence, telling reporters, "I want to address kind of a rumor and urban legend that's going around, and it comes from language in the president's Wednesday night address to the nation, that in talking about Iran and Syria that he was trying to prepare the way for war with either country and that there are war preparations under way. There are not." It is hard to see how Bush's language can be construed as any sort of "urban legend."
• Democrats are not impressed with Bush's plan. Delivering the Democrats' official response, Senator Richard Durbin says, "Escalation of this war is not the change the American people called for in the last election." Durbin says Bush's plan ignores the advice of his own top generals, including General John Abizaid, the outgoing chief of US forces in the Middle East. Durbin calls for the "orderly" withdrawal of troops from Iraq to send the Iraqis the message that the United States will not perpetually back them militarily: "Every time they call 911, we are not going to send 20,000 more American soldiers," he says. Durbin rejects the argument that the basic solution in Iraq is a military one. "If there's any surge that's needed in Iraq, it's a surge in diplomacy," he says. Durbin's colleague Barack Obama, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, tells CNN's Larry King that he "didn't see any political strategy in the president's remarks to get Sunni and Shia to arrive at the political accommodation" necessary for peace. Obama wants any redeployments to go to "Afghanistan and other areas where we can fight the battle against terrorism and al-Qaeda." Another Democratic senator and presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, says Bush's Iraq policy "has been marred by incompetence and arrogance. ...He will continue to take us down the wrong road -- only faster." And former Democratic senator and declared presidential candidate John Edwards adds, "[T]the trust in the president has eroded. I think escalating the war is a huge mistake." "By calling for the rapid escalation of American troops in Iraq, the president rebuffed his commanders, thumbed his nose at the Baker-Hamilton commission and, worst of all, ignored the will of the American people," says House Democrat Chris Van Hollen. Majority Leader Harry Reid says, "In choosing to escalate the war, the president virtually stands alone."
• A senior White House official says that if Democrats want to criticize the plan, they "bear the burden of devising an alternative." Republican John McCain, one of the earliest and loudest supporters of the escalation, says of the Democrats, "I believe these individuals...have a responsibility to tell us what they believe are the consequences of withdrawal in Iraq. If we walk away from Iraq, we'll be back, possibly in the context of a wider war in the world's most volatile region."
• Some Republicans, including senators Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith, are also opposed to the troop escalation, with Hagel calling Bush's plan "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out. I will resist it." Hagel continues, "This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost. We should be focused on helping the Iraqis find a political solution and creating a policy that allows us to leave Iraq honorably, has the sustained support of the American people and does not further destabilize the Middle East." On the flip side, "independent Democrat" Joseph Lieberman comes out strongly in favor of Bush's proposals, lining up with such Republican senators as John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accuses Democrats of secretly favoring a plan to cut off funding for the troops, an allegation that Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deny. McConnell snaps, "Congress is completely incapable of dictating the tactics of the war." In the House, Republican Ric Keller says he, too, is breaking ranks with Republicans over their support of Bush's war policy. "At this late stage, interjecting more young American troops into the crossfire of an Iraqi civil war is simply not the right approach," he says.
• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other NSC officials testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 11 about Bush's Iraq policies, and Democratic senator Barbara Boxer says sternly to Rice, "You are not listening to the American people. ...And you wonder why there is a dark cloud of skepticism and pessimism over this nation." Republican senator George Voinovich tells Rice, "You're going to have to do a much better job" explaining the rationale for the war, "and so is the president. He says Bush can no longer count on his support. "I've gone along with the president on this and I've bought into his dream and at this stage of the game I just don't think its going to happen," Voinovich says. Democrat Joseph Biden, the committee chairman, tells Rice, "I believe the president's strategy is not a solution. I believe it's a tragic mistake. So Secretary Rice, to be very blunt, I can't in good conscience support the president's approach." Noting his own past support for the war, Democrat Bill Nelson says, "I cannot continue to support the administration's position. I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth."
• Rice tries to dispute Hagel's characterization of Bush's plan as an "escalation," but an exasperated Hagel refuses to play Rice's semantic games. "Putting in 22,000 more troops is not an escalation?" he asks. Rice retorts, "I think, Senator, escalation is not just a matter of how many numbers you put in." "Would you call it a decrease?" Hagel snaps, to which Rice replies, "I would call it, senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad." Hagel is unimpressed. "Madame Secretary, Iraqis are killing Iraqis. We are in a civil war. This is sectarian violence out of control." Rice tries to deny that Iraq is in a civil war, but to that, Hagel says, "To sit there and say that, that's just not true."
• If anything, Democrat Barbara Boxer is even more harsh with Rice, pointing out that Rice, with no children of her own, will not feel the loss of a son or daughter in Iraq. "Who pays the price?" Boxer asks Rice. "I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a personal price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families...not me, not you." Rice retorts, "I fully understand the sacrifice that the American people are making, and especially the sacrifice that our soldiers are making, men and women in uniform. I visit them. I know what they're going through. I talk to their families. I see it." Boxer retorts, "Madam Secretary, please. I know you feel terrible about it. That's not the point. I was making the case as to who pays the price for your decisions. And the fact that this administration would move forward with this escalation with no clue as to the further price that we're going to pay militarily...I find really appalling."
• British prime minister Tony Blair says his country will have no part of any escalations; instead, Britain will continue with its strategy of gradually turning over control of Basra and other areas of southern Iraq currently under British control to Iraqi forces.
• The Washington Post notes that the escalation of troops was decided upon, in large part, in defiance of the recommendations of the James Baker-led Iraq Study Group: "As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton. ...How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme." And Bush, after years of telling the world that he based his decisions on the recommendations from the generals in the field, fired his two supreme commanders in Iraq, Abizaid and General George Casey, because they publicly avowed that such an escalation would be counterproductive, and intimidated other senior military commanders and Pentagon officials to keep their dissent to themselves. Less than a month ago, Bush said, "It's important to trust the judgment of the military when they're making military plans. I'm a strict adherer to the command structure."
• Britain's Guardian calls Bush's plan "the last throw of the dice in a misconceived enterprise that has dragged his country, this country and the Middle East into a nightmare. ...In opting for a troop surge, Mr Bush has ignored the message of the mid-term elections, the Iraq Study Group, Congress, his own top generals and most world opinion. US generals have difficulty enough maintaining current levels of combat-ready troops and are not convinced that more troops will make any difference. Rather than listen to them, Mr Bush has turned to the right, to those who argue that honour and America's national interests require fighting on. ...Surrounded by the wreckage of the disaster they created, both men [Blair and Bush] still hope, against all reality, that somehow the pieces can be put back together again. But their project is dead. A few more troops, or a few more months, will not restore it. Both men are on their way out. By stringing the war along without admitting defeat, it will become the business of another British prime minister and another American president to end it."
• A Toledo Blade editorial observes, "President Bush had one more opportunity, in a televised speech Wednesday night from the White House, to convince the American people he knows what he is doing in Iraq. He failed. ...He seemed to ignore, first, U.S. experience in Iraq to date; second, the deteriorating situation on the ground there now, and, third, the clear lack of confidence expressed by the American people in his judgment on Iraq at the ballot box in November and in the polls. In pitching his 'new way forward,' Mr. Bush appeared before the American people much as a man would go to his family or a friend, say that he had lost all his money at the racetrack, but ask for just $20 more to put on a sure thing in one more race. The problem is that Mr. Bush's gamble this time is with the lives of 21,500 more Americans, with more than 3,000 having died there already."
• Veteran AP political analyst Tom Raum writes, "President Bush's new plan for Iraq sounds a lot like his old one. Send in more troops, set goals for the Iraqi government and assure Americans it's better to wage war there than here. ...The plan the president will outline to the nation Wednesday night is the latest repackaging of a program that's been wrapped and rewrapped many times. ...It's different this time, Bush supporters say of his new strategy -- always words to beware. ...It's an old story: The US before has temporarily raised troop levels, taken steps to encourage democracy, spent money on education and public works and set benchmarks for the Iraqi government. In the fall of 2005, the president gave a series of speeches around the country on the way forward in Iraq. To mark the campaign, the White House issued a glossy 35-page document titled 'Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,' spelling out a series of military, political and economic initiatives." Instead, the troop increased accomplished nothing. This will also be the third time that Bush has announced a joint effort with the al-Maliki government to beef up security in Baghdad. The first two efforts accomplished nothing. Says foreign policy analyst Michael O'Hanlon, who advised the Iraq Study Group, "Anything that would work now would have worked even better two years ago. Increasing troops has always been an option. But this is probably the least promising time to try it of the past almost four years." And Democrat David Obey, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, says that Bush first said that US troops would stand down as Iraqis stood up. "Now it sounds like we're being told that Americans will stand up as the Iraqis are standing up," says Obey. "That's a confusing difference to me."
• A Buzzflash editorial observes, "There is no 'new plan' for Bush to announce." Theonly thing new about Bush's plan is the term "surge," a term that, as the editorial notes, "came out of the infamous Frank Luntz focus groups to try to make the stench of American men and women dying in Baghdad in greater numbers more palatable. That is all that is new to Bush's defiant legacy of failed leadership. ...We have been seeing the same plan endlessly fail -- and then endlessly repackaged over and over and over again." The editorial continues to savage the Bush plan: "This betrayal of the lives of our GIs is a criminal act. It is an action that will result in unnecessary deaths for the sole reason of three men who cannot admit the horrendous mistake that they undertook that resulted in the deaths of 3000 GIs to begin with -- men, women and even grandparents (reservists) who were killed in the sands and streets of Iraq. For any media outlet to call this a 'surge' or a 'new plan' -- or give it the veneer of credibility -- is to enable a felonious act of lunacy and egomania. All the king's men have betrayed their country and signed a death warrant on military personnel who believed that their commander-in-chief would only send them into harm's way to protect our national security. ...This is not a 'new plan' -- just a variation on the theme of utter incompetence that has lasted years; it is indifferently upping the death count of men and women of whom we have asked so much, but never to die for the delusions of a mad monarch." (White House [text of Bush's speech], CNN, San Francisco Chronicle, London Daily Mail, Washington Post, CNN, AP/Yahoo! News, Washington Post, Buzzflash, Daily Kos [includes graphic illustrating troop levels], Guardian, ABC News, AP/Yahoo! News, AP/Yahoo! News, Reuters/Yahoo! News, CNN, AP/Yahoo! News, Toledo Blade, AP/Traverse City Record-Eagle)

"[It is] the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out." -- Republican senator Chuck Hagel on Bush's war plan

• January 10: While a number of Bush administration officials bear some responsibility for the rigid neoconservative slant of the "new" Iraq policy and the shunning of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, the person at the center of the decision-making process was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

  Iraq war and occupation

  In the end, faced with a choice between the neoconservatives' mad dreams of American empire and the more pragmatic, business-friendly policies of the ISG's James Baker and the circle of advisors around the senior George H.W. Bush, Rice chose to go with the neoconservatives.
• Baker knew from the outset that the younger Bush would not accept the recommendations of his ISG simply on its merits. Bush was certain not to accept any assessment that portrayed the situation in Iraq as "grave and deteriorating," nor any judgement of his own policies as "not working." Baker was counting on the intervention of Rice, the one person in Bush's tight inner circle who might be able to deliver the bad news to Bush and have him listen. Baker and Brent Scowcroft, another of the elder Bush's closest advisors, began reassembling the old Bush national security team, using the ISG to mobilize the old hands. According to columnist Sidney Blumenthal, "[t]hey saw this as a last chance to save the Bush presidency, which was indelibly tainting the father's legacy, and replace neoconservatism with foreign policy realism." At the end of August 2006, Scowcroft briefed Rice, who seemed to agree with his views, and made it clear to her that she alone could induce Bush to change his policies.
• Blumenthal writes, "Rice now confronted the biggest quandary of her career. On one side were the authorities that had shaped her foreign policy experience, not only Scowcroft and Baker but also, as she well knew, the looming shadow of Bush's father. On the other was the president, who had raised her into Baker's seventh-floor office in Foggy Bottom, whom she had flattered as the equal of Lincoln and Churchill, and whom, in a telling Freudian slip, she had referred to as 'my husband' before a roomful of reporters and editors of the New York Times. Throughout the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and afterward Rice had been Bush's enabler. It was because Scowcroft understood her special relationship that he sought to win her over."
• One instance reflective of Rice's thinking could be seen when, on September 15, her closest aide, Philip Zelikow, who had served with Rice on the elder Bush's National Security Council, said during a speech, "some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of things that we care about." Dick Cheney's office promptly lashed Zelikow's statements, and Rice took Cheney's side in the matter. Her public rebuke of Zelikow prompted his abrupt resignation, on November 27. Nine days after Zelikow's resignation, the ISG report was released.
• The ISG did not go over well in the White House, especially among the academics and "fighting keyboardists" who make up Bush's war council. An incensed Bush called it "a flaming turd," but the reporters from the Washington Post and New York Times who learned of the remark chose to protect Bush's reputation and not publicize the remark. But Baker and Scowcroft hoped that Rice could prod Bush to see reason.
• Baker and Scowcroft knew that the resistance they would meet in the White House would center around Dick Cheney and the band of neoconservatives gathered under his wing. They asked one of their own, former Army vice chief of staff Jack Keane, to meet with Frederick Kagan, another neocon ideologue from the American Enterprise Institute. Kagan had loudly advocated the idea of a massive "surge" of troops into Iraq. Keane's presence gave Kagan's proposals "a patina of military credibility," as Blumenthal writes. Kagan, with Keane and a group of AEI neocons, whipped up a PowerPoint presentation (riddled with errors -- see the related January 10 entry below) for Bush's perusal.
• Publicly Bush attempted to be gracious about the ISG report, but privately he was coarsely, profanely furious at both the content of the report and the presumption of the authors. One of the biggest reasons why Bush and his NSC war advisors liked the idea of a troop escalation was because it went directly against the recommendations of the ISG -- an eminently childish reason for any such decision. Cheney had supported the selection of former ISG member Robert Gates as the new secretary of defense for the primary reason that Gates had transformed himself from a skeptic into a "team player;" with Gates's help, Cheney and his neocon allies used the criticisms of the suggested troop escalations from Generals John Abizaid and George Casey to engineer their removals. The Joint Chiefs of Staff may have been getting some media attention with their own criticisms, but in the White House they were ignored. Meanwhile Rice, perhaps the only White House official safe from Cheney's long knives, was staying out of the rounds of criticisms and reprisals. She finally intervened in late December, when the US military commanders in Iraq and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad protested against a rush by the Iraqi government to hang Saddam Hussein. Rice overrode their objections and gave the signal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to proceed with the execution.
• In some ways the gruesome debacle of the Hussein execution was a good thing, insamuch as it reminded everyone that al-Maliki is, heart and soul, a creature of the Shi'ite Dawa party and, like his party, committed to sectarianism and victory over the enemy -- the Sunnis and, to a lesser extent, the Kurds. No "surge" of American troops will revitalize the al-Maliki government because, as Blumenthal writes, "that government cannot and does not wish to be reformed. The problem is not merely that Maliki is a weak political leader, or that his political coalition wouldn't permit it, or that his Iranian sponsors wouldn't allow repudiation -- all of which are indisputably true. The irreducible reason is that Maliki exists only to achieve Shiite control, and if he did not he would not exist. There is no other Maliki. Nor can Bush invent one. Bush's 'surge,' therefore, is a military plan that cannot produce its stated political outcome and will instead further unleash the forces he claims will be controlled. His offensive to subdue the Sunni insurgents, for example, is already accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad by the Shi'ite militias, which, rather than being contained, are further empowered."
• Blumenthal makes an interesting observation concerning Bush's rash implementation of "democracy" as contrasted to the less publicly satisfying but ultimately far more stable government structure implemented in Bosnia and Kosovo. "Bush's rhetoric about democracy' underlines his studied error in ignoring the lessons of nation building deeply ingrained in the experience of the US Foreign Service and US military in Bosnia and Kosovo. From the start, in the 2000 campaign, Bush disdained 'nation building' as Bill Clinton's project. During and after the Iraq invasion, his ideological preconceptions and hostility to the State Department precluded him from adopting its successes. In Bosnia and Kosovo, full sovereignty was not granted through an election -- to this day -- which would have turned over the country to one of the three contending religio-ethnic groups and fomented opposition insurgencies. Instead, the US led in organizing a broad range of international partners and institutions in creating a structure of stability that is a basis for gradual democratic development. By contrast, the election Bush promoted in Iraq was political grandstanding in the name of 'democracy' that incited the exclusion of Sunnis and aggravated civil warfare. Almost everything in place in Bosnia and Kosovo is absent in Iraq. The former is an example of US leadership, the latter a case study in amateurish blundering. Moreover, Bush has turned 'democracy' into a synonym for failure."
• This, of course, has a direct connection to the ineffectiveness of Rice. "The State Department has been completely sidelined in the making of Bush's latest and last policy on Iraq. Its experience in the Balkans remains thoroughly ignored. And Rice does nothing to call it to Bush's attention, for that would require her to point out his shortcomings. The State Department founders like a ghost ship. Rice meanders back and forth to and from the Middle East, the shuttle without the diplomacy." John Negroponte has reluctantly agreed to become Rice's deputy. Blumenthal concludes, "In exchanging a Cabinet post for a sub-Cabinet one, a position of policymaking for an administrative post, Negroponte excited rumors that he would only have decided to make the switch if he believed that Rice would eventually leave and he would ascend to her job. But, once again, the logic of that Washington gossip is merely rational. Rice the irrelevancy remains Bush's indispensable devotee." (Salon)
• January 10: Many elements of Bush's new plan for Iraq is from a report (actually a PowerPoint presentation) called "Choosing Victory," written by neoconservative hawk Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute in collaboration with retired Army general Jack Keane.

  Iraq war and occupation

  AEI neocons such as Paul Wolfowitz, and their allies such as Dick Cheney, are, of course, primarily responsible for the Bush administration's belligerent, obdurate Middle East strategies up till now. Unfortunately, even the most basic details of Kagan's plan are wrong: Kagan can't even get his geography straight. AEI provides several glossy maps of Baghdad, focusing on Shi'ite, Sunni, and other enclaves within the city, but those maps are wrong. Sparsely populated districts are erroneously shown as various sectarian "enclaves." Even the names of the various neighborhoods and districts of Baghdad are often wrong. It is hard to place any faith in Kagan's reports if even his maps are incorrect. (Daily Kos [includes numerous maps])
• January 10: House Democrats leaders say they will derail funding for Bush's proposal to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.

  Iraq war and occupation

  The Democrats intend to isolate Bush politically and force the beginnings of a phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The move is led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative John Murtha, who, in a closed-door meeting with the House Democratic Caucus, invoked the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as she urged her members against timidity and towards solidarity. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, a quiet, hawkish supporter of the war, stuns many of his colleagues when he comes out strenuously against Bush's proposal and says the war may no longer be militarily winnable. Murtha will open hearings and begin drafting legislation that will stop funding for any troop escalation. While Bush pressured the Democrats to withhold action until after his speech, they refused, knowing that nothing Bush was likely to say would change their minds. Democrats also know that the timeframe for stopping any troop escalation is short, and that the more time they spend waiting at Bush's behest, the less time they have to keep the troops from being deployed. (Washington Post)
• January 10: Following the House's lead, the Senate moves to produce its own ethics legislation that will drastically curb the cozy relationship between cash-flush lobbyists and lawmakers easily tempted into selling their votes.

  Congressional Democrats

  We "demonstrate once and for all that we care more about representing the American people than the perks of power," says Democrat Dianne Feinstein. Both House Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are working to plug loopholes in the current ethics legislation, which is inadequate in several key areas. Under the new rules, lawmakers will pay full price for tickets to sporting and entertainment events; legislative "earmarks" would be more broadly defined and more strictly regulated; lawmakers will pay charter rates, not the far less expensive first class rates, when they fly on corporate jets; block lawmakers negotiating for jobs with lobbying firms while still in ofice; and other changes, mostly inspired by the rampant, systematic corruption displayed by Republicans such as convicted criminal Randy Cunningham, a former House leader sent to jail last year for taking bribes. "We should not tolerate a committee chairman shepherding the Medicare prescription drug bill through Congress at the same time that he is negotiating a job with the pharmaceutical industry to become their top lobbyist," says Democrat Barack Obama, referring to former House Republican Billy Tauzin, who left Congress in 2005 to head the trade group representing pharmaceutical companies. Tauzin had chaired the committee that regulated drug makers and was a key player in passing the prescription drug bill that critics said was favorable to the pharmaceutical industry. Like many House Republicans, Senate Republican Trent Lott says that the ethics bill is little more than overreacting and "feckless positioning to make it look good." On the other hand, Democratic senator Richard Durbin says that the ethics bill does not go far enough, and the Senate needs to address the overarching question of campaign finance. This bill would ban a lobbyist from buying him lunch, Durbin says, but "tomorrow that same lobbyist can have me over for lunch at his lobbying firm to provide campaign funds for my reelection campaign and its perfectly legal." (AP/Traverse City Record-Eagle)
• January 10: The irony of non-reader George W. Bush even having a presidential library pales in comparison to the massive fund-raising boondoggle that is behind plans for the largest and most costly presidential library ever to be build, a $500 million monstrosity to be constructed on the Dallas campus of Southern Methodist University, where Laura Bush is an alumna and trustee.

  George W. Bush

  The library will host a ideologically extremist, conservative think tank. The funds are being raised by people described as the truest of Bush loyalists, with half of the donations coming from a small group of "megadonors" kicking in $10 to $20 million apiece. The smallest donation being solicited is $25,000. The donors are anonymous, but one can extrapolate from the list of the donors to the elder Bush's own presidential library, which include a sheikh from the UAE, who donated $1 million; the nation of Kuwait; the nation of China; the family of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Bush's colleague and foreign policy mentor; the Sultan of Oman; King Hassan II of Morocco; the emir of Qatar; the former prime minister of South Korea; Enron's Kenneth Lay; and vice president Dick Cheney.
• The real source of controversy for the new Bush library is not just the enormous amount of Middle Eastern oil money funding the construction, but the new think tank, tentatively named the Institute for Democracy. Modeled after the Hoover Institution, a long-time conservative think tank located on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Bush's institute would hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," according to one Bush insider. "This would effectively be the post-administration version of a policy they established during his reign -- paying columnists to advocate for administration policy" observes reporter Bill Berkowitz. The New York Daily News reports, "The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans." But plans for the think tank may founder due to opposition from many SMU faculty and staff members. According to Inside Higher Ed, "Faculty critics say that although many of them disagree with President Bush's policies, they would not object to a library-oriented archive and museum -- and they say that in discussions with professors, the university has discussed a vision for such a Bush center. But creating an academic center with a specific goal of boosting the Bush image and agenda strikes many professors as antithetical to a university's academic values."
• Suzanne Johnson, an SMU associate professor of Christian education, is worried about the fact that SMU historically has had a reputation for attracting wealthy students -- a reputation that the university has tried to combat in recent years by offering generous scholarship to low-income students. "I think it might be a setback in terms of trying to attract a different constituency among students," she says. "Children of wealthy, leading Republicans in this state come to SMU, and then they are groomed here to become Republican leaders in all sectors of society. We shouldn't be in the business of just replicating Republicans." (Media Transparency)
• January 10: Former deputy secretary of the interior J. Steven Griles is a target of the investigation into the corruption and bribery scandal centering around convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

  Jack Abramoff scandal

  Griles is being investigated for, among other allegations, making false statements to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2005 about job discussions Abramoff initiated while Griles was deputy secretary. The Justice Department investigation has examined donations made by Abramoff's Indian tribal clients to an environmental advocacy group run by Italia Federici, who was involved with Griles socially. Also under scrutiny are donations made to Federici's group by energy and mining companies. E-mails released last year by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee showed that Griles had more than half a dozen contacts with Abramoff or with Federici, head of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, who was working as the lobbyist's go-between to Griles. As an interesting side note, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, a senior Justice Department official who has been dating Griles, resigns after notice of Griles's investigation reaches her desk. Wooldridge served as Interior Department solicitor and as deputy chief of staff to then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton before moving to Justice in November 2005. Griles was a controversial figure at Interior, a former lobbyist strongly criticized by the department's inspector general, environmental groups, and watchdog organizations for maintaining ties to, and making favorable decisions on behalf of, energy and mining companies that were once his lobbying clients. (Washington Post)
• January 10: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is adamant about her opposition to the Bush escalation, and her leadership of her fellow Democrats against such a move.

  Iraq war and occupation

  She insists that Democrats will not be intimidated by the usual Republican attacks on their bravery and patriotism, saying, "We will not be swiftboated on these issues." She says, "Democrats oppose the escalation. Senator Reid and I signed a letter to that effect to the president last week. And we're making a very strong differentiation between supporting our troops, which we do -- those in the field now -- and giving a blank check to the president for an escalation of the war. He's done this before, this escalation, and it hasn't worked. And the same poor judgment that got us to where we are now, is what he wants us to respect as he goes forward. ...We will say what we believe is right for our country and if he wants to say 'you're cutting off funding for the troops,' we just have to come right back on that -- because that's all they say. What are they going to say? 'You want to cut off money for the troops' -- we're not doing that. There are people who want us to, but that's not what the leadership and the Democratic party in Congress is advocating, by and large."
• On Iran and Syria, Pelosi is most worried that Bush will conduct a pretense of diplomacy, then give up after the pretense fails and use a military option against one or both of those countries. "What I'm concerned about with the president is that he will try to make it look as if he's making diplomatic overtures which are not really of the depth and breadth that they have to be and then say 'well, I've exhausted the diplomatic remedy,'" Pelosi says. "So what we have to do on the Congressional side, on our oversight is to, again, be unequivocal in Congress and globally that we do not want them [Iran] to go forward and that we do not want to increase the number of nuclear powers in the world. It endangers the world, it's wrong. But, on the other hand, we have time to do this right and we're going to keep a close watch on the president so that he doesn't call a gesture or token diplomacy as 'well, we tried that and it did not work.'"
• Pelosi is outraged at recent reports that American oil companies are set to exploit the Iraqi oil fields (see the January 7 item above). "In the president's proposal, one of the standards that he's setting for them to meet is that 75% of the oil production goes to US companies," she says. "This is stunning -- 75% of the production goes to the US. Is this what our kids are over there for?" (Bob Geiger)
• January 10: MSNBC's Keith Olbermann uses Bush's own claims to thoroughly dismantle his credibility on the Iraq debacle.

  Iraq war and occupation

  In a segment of his "Countdown," Olbermann lists, matter-of-factly, one lie and self-contradiction. Olbermann says in part, "Any meaningful assessment of the president's next step in Iraq must consider his steps and missteps so far. So, let's look at the record:
  • "Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said he was no nation-builder; nation-building was wrong for America. Now, he says it is vital for America.
  • He said he would never put US troops under foreign control. Today, US troops observe Iraqi restrictions.
  • He told us about WMDs. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubing. Yellow-cake.
  • He has told us the war is necessary: because Saddam was a threat; because of 9/11; Osama bin Laden; al-Qaeda; because of terrorism in general; to liberate Iraq; to spread freedom; to spread democracy; to keep the oil out of the hands of terrorist-controlled states; because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.
  • In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Moqtada al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden.
  • He sent in fewer troops than recommended. He disbanded the Iraqi Army, and 'de-Ba'athified' the government. He short-changed Iraqi training.
  • He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence.
  • He sent in troops without life-saving equipment.
  • Gave jobs to foreign contractors, not the Iraqis.
  • Staffed US positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.
  • We learned that 'America had prevailed,' 'Mission Accomplished,' the resistance was in its 'last throes.'
  • He has said more troops were not necessary, and more troops are necessary, and that it's up to the generals, and removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.
  • He told us of turning points: The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government,the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, ¤elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam.
  • We would be greeted as liberators, with flowers.
  • As they stood up, we would stand down, we would stay the course, we were never about 'stay the course.'
  • The enemy was al-Qaeda, was foreigners, terrorists, Ba'athists.
  • The war would pay for itself, it would cost 1.7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars.
  • And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people." (MSNBC/Crooks and Liars [link to video])
• January 10: Paul Craig Roberts, the former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and current contributing editor of the conservative magazine National Review, believes that Bush's new escalation of troops into Iraq is "an orchestrated distraction from the real war plan."

  Iraq war and occupation

  Roberts believes that the "surge" is merely to distract America's attention -- Congress, media, and citizenry alike -- from a planned assault on Iran by "Israel and its American neoconservative allies...." Roberts looks at the puzzling appointment of "a US Navy admiral as commander in charge of the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The appointment makes sense only if the administration's attention has shifted from the insurgencies to an attack on Iran," he writes. "The Bush administration has recently doubled its aircraft carrier forces and air power in the Persian Gulf. According to credible news reports, the Israeli air force has been making practice runs in preparation for an attack on Iran. Recently, Israeli military and political leaders have described Israeli machinations to manipulate the American public and their representatives into supporting or joining an Israeli assault on Iran." Two carrier groups are moving into the Persian Gulf, as are US nuclear submarines (one of which collided with a Japanese oil tanker on January 9). "Their purpose is either to provide the means for a hard hit on Iran or to serve as sitting ducks for a new Pearl Harbor that would rally Americans behind the new war. Whether our ships are hit by Iran in retaliation to an attack from Israel or suffer an orchestrated attack by Israel that is blamed on the Iranians, there are certainly far more US naval forces in the Persian Gulf than prudence demands.
• Roberts continues, "Bush's proposed surge appears to have no real military purpose. The US military opposes it as militarily pointless and as damaging to the US Army and Marine Corps. The surge can only be accomplished by keeping troops deployed after the arrival of their replacements. Moreover, the increase in numbers that can be achieved in this way are far short of the numbers required to put down the insurgency and civil war. The only purpose of the surge is to distract Congress while plans are implemented to widen the war."
• The question is, why? Iran has no nuclear weapons, and is years away from making one, according to UN weapons inspectors. Roberts believes that Israel is orchestrating this planned attack with the enthusiastic cooperation of the bloodthirsty megalomaniacs in the White House (the editor's words, not Roberts's). Roberts writes, "The answer might be that Israel has the chance now. The Bush administration is in its pocket. The White House is working with neoconservatives, not with the American foreign policy community represented by the Iraq Study Group. Neoconservative propagandists are in influential positions in the media. The US Congress is intimidated by AIPAC. The correlation of forces are heavily in Israel's favor. Part of the Israeli/neoconservative plan has already been achieved with the destruction of civilian infrastructure and spread of sectarian strife in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. If Iran can be taken out with a powerful air attack that might involve nuclear weapons, Syria would be isolated and Hezbollah would be cut off from Iranian supplies. Israel has two years remaining to use its American resources to achieve its aims in the Middle East.
• "How influential will Israel and the neoconservatives be with the next president in the wake of a US defeat in Iraq and Israeli defeat in Lebanaon? If the US withdraws its troops from Iraq, as the US military and foreign policy community recommend and as polls show the American public wants, the only effect of Bush's Iraq invasion will have been to radicalize Muslims against Israel, the US, and US puppet governments in the Middle East. Extremist elements will tout their victory over the US, and the pressures on Israel to accept a realistic accommodation with Palestinians will be overpowering. Now is the chance -- the only chance -- for Israel and the neoconservatives to achieve their goal of bringing Muslims to heel, a goal that they have been writing about and working to achieve for a decade. This goal requires the war to be widened by whatever deceit and treachery necessary to bring the American public along. The US Congress must immediately refocus its attention from the surge to Iran, the real target of Bush administration aggression." (Counterpunch)
• January 10: National security expert William Arkin is dismayed by Bush's new foreign policy direction as delineated in his speech earlier in the evening, particularly with Bush's "evident willingness to go to war with Syria and Iran to seek peace.

  Bush's foreign policies

  ...[Bush's words are] only a threat. But it is a far cry from the diplomatic proposals floated just last month for making Syria and Iran part of the solution. Can the president really be saying that we are willing to risk war with the two countries, and even attack elements inside them, to achieve peace in Iraq?" Arkin notes the "feel-good element[s]" of everything produced by the White House on Iraq, from presidential speeches to fact sheets, background briefings, and Power Point presentations. "Everyone, the US included, is committing to the program and redoubling their efforts. One doesn't have to be too cynical to note the definite feel-good element to it all." After summing up the content of the speech, and noting the obvious missing pieces to the plan -- what about Syria and Iran, and will the Iraqis step up -- Arkin concludes simply, "The President giveth peace and he taketh away." (Washington Post)
• January 10: One of the more telling analyses of Bush's speech comes from Newsweek political commentator Howard Fineman, who has a long history of fawning over Bush's public pronouncements and penning starry-eyed essays about the wonders of all things Dubya.

  Iraq war and occupation

  Now, a newly uncertain Fineman writes that during his speech, Bush "spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup." Fineman, who has covered Bush since 1987, observes that "I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war." Not only were Bush's words not what Americans wanted to hear, but, as Fineman observes, Bush's own demeanor did not inspire confidence, either: "George Bush had the look of a man who knew he had made a royal hash of things in reaching for what most enlightened people would say was a noble goal: a stable, antiterrorist Iraq."
• As so many others have noted, Bush's plan is nonsensical. Fineman asks, "Does anyone in America or Iraq, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, really think that the Sunnis and Shia will make peace? Does anyone think that embedded American soldiers won't be in danger of being fragged by their own Iraqi brethren? Does anyone really think that Iran and Syria can be prevented from playing havoc in Iraq and the rest of the region by expressions of presidential will?"
• Fineman notes that Bush's handlers chose the "book-lined backdrop of the library in the White House to evoke the midwar FDR." The choice of the library "was supposed to be the kind of matter-of-fact, detail-filled radio address that the Old Man gave each week through the course of the last Good War. Problem was, Bush had long since forfeited the political credibility that FDR was able to maintain through his presidency. Roosevelt made huge mistakes, and the rules of the times allowed him to hold back much information. But the public believed him in his role as a leader of the Western World. Luckily for Roosevelt, he was on the radio for the most part."
• Fineman writes that the biggest problem he seems to have is "not so much that he has lied to the American people -- though he may well have done so -- but that he seems for years to have been lying to himself. What the voters saw on TV just now was a man struggling to come to grips with his own unwillingness to face facts. It's still a struggle. His acknowledgement of mistakes was oblique and not as brave as it sounded at first blush. Mistakes were made, and he said. 'The responsibility rests with me,' he said. What he meant to convey was that others had made the mistakes, but that he was stepped up to take the hit. Hoo-aw! He said that he had 'consulted' congressional leaders of both parties before he came to a decision on sending more than 20,000 additional troops. He didn't really consult with members of Congress, and certainly not with Democrats, unless you consider Sen. Joe Lieberman a Democrat." Of the public's reaction, Fineman is sober in his assessment: "I'm not sure that they are really listening, but if they were watching, they can't have been reassured by the man they saw in the basement of the White House." (MSNBC)
• January 10: Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro is continuing his attempts to indict 26 CIA agents and five Italian secret service agents for the kidnapping of a terror suspect, in defiance of the wishes of the Italian and US governments.

  US torture allegations

  The Italian court has not yet decided whether to take the case, which if heard, would cast an uncomfortable spotlight on the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. Under the secret renditions program, suspected terrorists were kidnapped and interrogated at secret "black" sites.
• The case hinges on the kidnapping of radical Islamist cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar. In February 2003, Omar was kidnapped from Milan by a CIA team of agent, not for committing any crime, but because he might have knowledge of European jihadists. Omar was drugged, bound, taken to the US base at Aviano, then to the US airbase at Ramstein, Germany, and from there flown to a jail in Egypt. The Egyptians, according to Omar in a letter he smuggled out of the jail, he was subjected to electric shocks and other abuses that left his face permanently disfigured. Omar still languishes in a jail in Alexandria, with no charges pending against him. Der Spiegel reporters Georg Mascolo and Matthias Gebauer write, "It is now known that in the fight against international terror following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks this was common CIA practice -- something the US has indirectly admitted, without expressing any regret. Instead of waiting for the necessary due process, the agency preferred to kidnap those it had decided were suspects. Instead of placing them in US jails they were stuck in holes somewhere in countries that were known for torture and therefore speedy interrogation results. It is precisely these practices that are now the subject of several investigations in EU countries."
• Spataro has given the CIA reason to worry. The prosecutor has an impressive array of evidence against both the CIA and Italian agents in the kidnapping of Omar. Even as the White House promises that there is no need to fear either extradition or prosecution, the agency worries about the Democrats, both now that they are scheduling hearings on the CIA's rendition program, and in 2008, when it is possible a Democrat will occupy the White House. But even though the agents will face arrest warrants in the European Union, the Italian Foreign Ministry never sent the prosecutor's extradition warrant, out of loyalty to its partner, the US. Mascolo and Gebauer remember the ominous warning from the former head of the CIA's counterterrorism unit, Cofer Black, who said in 2001, "One day we will all be in court for what we are doing now." As for the CIA, its senior officials are livid, not at the renditions per se, but at the clumsiness of the agents, who did not bother to hide their tracks. "It's not only bad tradecraft, but it's stupid," says Richard Stolz, a former CIA deputy director of operations. Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer finds the boldness of the kidnapping, and the collusion of the ambitious CIA station chief in Rome, hard to countenance. "If I had taken a plan to my bosses to kidnap someone in Europe, it better have been Osama himself, and I doubt I would have gotten permission even then," he says.
• Of more immediate concern for the Italian government is the likely prosecution of the five Italian agents. While former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi denies that his government had any role in the kidnapping, it is hard to believe that Berlusconi's government, so closely allied with the Bush administration, didn't take part -- in fact, it is hard to believe that the operation could have been successfully prosecuted without Italian cooperation. Former top Italian spy Nicolo Pollari has said he will testify -- but only if Berlusconi and the current prime minister, Romano Prodi, also appear in court. Such an appearance would be a political bombshell. And a similar investigation being conducted in Germany by prosecutor Eberhard Bayer is paralleling Spataro's investigation, with the two conferring on their mutual progress. Bayer is involved because the CIA flight, like so many other rendition flights, landed in Germany. Bayer acknowledges that his own investigation is crippled because of the absolute refusal by the US to cooperate. "To be honest, we're at our wits end," Bayer says. But Bayer is hopeful that the Spataro prosecution will succeed. "Of course it's true that we're dealing with big political issues here," says Bayer, speaking in abstract terms. "But even if a crime is a political one, it still remains a crime." (Der Spiegel)
• January 10: Republican House member Jack Kingston, who in December bellyached about having to work a five-day workweek in Congress instead of his previous two-and-a-half day standard under the Republican leadership, has a different take on how families who live on minimum-wage earnings should cope with their financial difficulties: they should marry and work longer hours.

  Bush's economic policies

  Railing against the minimum-wage raise proposal by House Democrats, Kingston says on the floor, "If the Democrat [sic] Party truly wanted to take on poverty, they would have to say what is the relationship between marriage and the poverty level and between hours worked and the poverty level, because the truth of the matter is, if people end poverty, many of them would marry and work 40 hours a week, they would be out of poverty. ...It's not something I have the knowledge of or the information of, but it's an economic fact that I hope we could have committee hearings on and discuss this. If we want to attack poverty, that's where we need to go." (Think Progress [link to video])
• January 10: The military commander Bush is counting on to rescue Iraq from chaos, Lieutenant General David Petraeus, once came to the defense of New York Times reporter Judith Miller during the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation.

  Plame outing

  Petraeus's intervention has been discovered by the New York Sun. In 2005, when Miller was facing the possibility of jail for refusing to name one of her sources, former Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby, in front of a grand jury, Petraeus wrote to a federal judge to discourage him from imprisoning her. "Judith demonstrated a deep commitment to her work and values as an American citizen," Petraeus wrote to Judge Thomas Hogan, in a letter delivered by Miller's lawyers to the judge. "Based on my interaction with her, I find it unlikely that Judith would compromise on those values, to include betraying information gained in confidence from her sources. ...Judith is clearly a highly professional journalist, one who has demonstrated to me that she will keep her word." Hogan refused to take Petraeus's advice, and locked up Miller for what became an 85-day jail stint. Petraeus's letter raised some eyebrows at the time because the politically sensitive investigation involved claims that top White House officials leaked the name of covert CIA operative, Plame, in order to lash back at her war critic husband, Joseph Wilson. By writing to the judge, Petraeus was, in effect, undermining the demand of the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, that Miller be sent to jail. Petraeus did not write on military letterhead and he made clear in his short letter that he was offering only his "personal views."
• Miller says of Petraeus, "I am not neutral about General Petraeus. He's enormously talented and we are damn lucky that he's going to take on a mission that some are calling 'Mission Impossible.'" Asked if he can pacify Iraq, Miller says, "I don't know if it will work, but the fact that David Petraeus will be in charge of it has given me more optimism than I otherwise would have." Miller got to know Petraeus in 2003, while she was embedded with a special military team seeking Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Miller came to enjoy such influence with Petraeus that at one point she persuaded him to help rescind orders to pull back the reconnaissance unit she was embedded with (see earlier items for details), though Miller calls that account "totally wrong in many, many respects." The author of the Washington Post story that revealed Petraeus's improper intervention on behalf of Miller, Howard Kurtz, says his story is "accurate in every detail," and says Miller was given the opportunity to comment before the story was published, an opportunity she declined. Miller's credibility has long been shot to pieces. (New York Sun)
• January 10: A foreign propaganda outlet forbidden by law to disseminate information publicly is the venue of choice for the Bush administration to deny information showing that the Bush family has purchased thousands of acres in a remote portion of northern Paraguay (see the October 18 item on this site for more information).

  Secrecy of Bush administration

  According to CNN, the State Department's USINFO Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team, led by Todd Leventhal, "helps US embassies identify and rebut other nations' disinformation, most often fabrications about the United States planted in foreign newspapers or television shows and, these days, on the Internet." The USINFO denials of the Paraguay property buy is appended, oddly enough, to an earlier USINFO denial that the US has a US military base near the Bush property in Paraguay.
• According to the State Department's propaganda arm, a number of Latin newspapers printed "allegations falsely claiming" that, among other things, George H.W. Bush owns 173,000 acres in the Chaco region of Paraguay, George W. Bush owns 98,842 acres in the same region, and Timothy Towell, former US ambassador to Paraguay from 1988 to 1991, administers the larger ranch on behalf of the elder Bush. "These supposed land acquisitions were often claimed to be associated with alleged US designs on the Guarani aquifer or the Mariscal Estigarribia air base," USINFO writes. "There is no truth to any of these allegations." As proof, it cites denials from the elder Bush, the White House, and from Towell.
• Talking Points Memo blogger "Truthista" notes that "while Timothy Towell's response apparently came directly from him, the responses of the President and former President were issued by anonymous persons in the 'White House' and the 'office' of George H.W. Bush. This is a classic method for creating plausible deniability. If the allegation is not true, why not issue the denial directly rather than through an obscure web page?"
• The State Department's USINFO calls a number of reports from Paraguay "myth:" including assertions that the US plans to "intervene" in regions of Paraguay including the tri-border region and the city of Ciudad del Este, and that the US plans to assert control of the Guarani Reservoir freshwater aquifer.
• These assertions have not been proven or disproven with finality. "Truthista" finds it interesting that, even though the State Department says US involvement in the region is primarily for commercial development, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld heading up talks with Paraguay in August, 2005. During that month, Paraguay's vice president Luis Castiglioni admitted that an agreement with Washington had already been reached, and that the arrangements had been confirmed during last week's visit to the country by Rumsfeld. Castiglioni says in part, "We have agreed to build a more secure Paraguay and a more secure continent, and if the United States cooperates with us, we will have more internal security, more security on our borders, in our airspace, and will contribute greatly to our region and to a safer continent." "Truthista" notes, "The emphasis on 'security' and the involvement of Secretary Rumsfeld strongly suggest some sort of planned military involvement. Were the US truly concerned only about improved governance and commercial development, one would expect the meeting with Castiglioni to have been headed by the Secretary of State, perhaps including a representative of the Department of Commerce.
• Further circumstantial evidence that the US is establishing a presence in the region came in December 2006, when the US froze the financial assets of two businesses and nine individuals in the area, accusing them of supporting the activities of the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah. Paraguay denied the allegations, at least in part over worries that the US might carry out its post-9/11 threat of military action against Paraguay as a part of its global war on terror. According to a Newsweek report, the idea of some sort of invasion of Paraguay was a product of Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans, and two analysts within the OSP: Michael Maloof and David Wurmser. (Wurmser is now a senior foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney.) "Maloof and Wurmser saw links between international terror groups that the CIA and other intelligence agencies dismissed. They argued that an attack on terrorists in South America -- for example, a remote region on the border of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil where intelligence reports said Iranian-backed Hizbullah had a presence -- would have ripple effects on other terrorist operations. The proposals were floated to top foreign-policy advisers. But White House officials stress they were regarded warily and never adopted."
• Again, the truth of the Bush land buys, and the large US military presence in Paraguay, cannot be fully documented (though the US is in the process of constructing a large military base near Ciudad del Este). But, as "Truthista" concludes, "Clearly, the Bush administration is not coming clean about plans for Paraguay, whatever they may be. But, mainstream news media have shown little interest in the subject, leaving the public to guess at the truth until it becomes too obvious for even the [mainstream media] to ignore." (Political Cortex/TPM Cafe [multiple sources])
• January 10: Reporter and analyst Jebediah Reed, writing for the Web tabloid Radar Online, is the next to wonder why the same pundits who have been so spectacularly and systematically wrong on all things Iraq are still relied upon for commentary and enlightenment by the mainstream media.

  Conservative media slant

  He focuses on four moderately hawkish, moderately conservative pundits: Thomas Friedman, Peter Beinart, Fareed Zakaria, and Jeffrey Goldberg. (Reed says that since most of the more hardline conservative pundits are relatively interchangeable in their rhetoric and their even more thorough failures, he sees little point in revisiting their harangues.)
  • The New York Times's Thomas Friedman is perhaps the most egregrious of the four. Unlike the others, Friedman seemed to understand the basic realities underlying the Iraq invasion in his columns written in the six months before the March 2003 onslaught, observing that "Iraq is a war of choice," admitting that the WMD rationale was essentially baseless, and that, while regime change in Iraq was a desirable end, it was unlikely that the incompetents in the Bush administration could successfully pull off the creation of peaceful democracy in Iraq: "we are talking about nation-building [and] the Bushies seem much more adept at breaking things than building things." But despite all of this, Friedman came out foursquare for the invasion and the occupation. His was one of the most listened-to voices supporting the war in the national media.
  • Friedman is currently luxuriating in a $9.3 million mansion in Bethesda, Maryland, was feted by Queen Elizabeth in 2004, and recently accepted a lifetime achievement from the Overseas Press Club. He has never owned up to his role in promoting the war, though now he blandly insists he always knew the war had the potential to become a calamity.
  • Peter Beinart became the editor of the New Republic, a cranky, somewhat libertarian magazine whose inside-the-Beltway influence has always exceeded its circulation. Shortly before the war, TNR underwent a transformation to make it a bit more hip and readable, and asserted that Beinart would be taking "several daring political stances." His main "daring political stance" was to proclaim a pro-war stance that was as belligerent as it was ignorant. Beinart attacked war critics for being "blind," "intellectually incoherent," and purveyors of "abject pacifism," and snarled that the US needed to go to war "even without the UN." One Democratic advisor complained to Beinart: "You're doing Rove's work for him." Beinart swallowed the WMD lies from the Bush administration whole, calling anyone who disagreed with the arguments "disingenuous."
  • Beinart was just named as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and has landed a spot as a columnist for the Washington Post. Beinart is a regular on cable talk shows, and has recently published a book. While Beinart admits that he was completely wrong about the war, but admitted to the Columbia Journalism Review that by early 2003, in advance of the invasion, it was becoming clear that the WMD accusations could be mistaken. He also admitted that he "was not suffiently attuned to...the evidence." Reed says, "Maybe his war bonnet was obstructing his vision. And he still has no shame about presenting himself as a font of foreign policy wisdom."
  • Fareed Zakaria is the editor for Newsweek's international edition, a regular columnist for the US edition, and a staple of "moderate" punditry on cable talk shows and broadcasts. Zakaria also took part in a gathering convened by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in late 2001, to help draft what a fellow participant called "a forceful summary of the best pro-war arguments." Those arguments became the blueprint for the Bush Administration's PR campaign. Not only did the so-called nonpartisan, objective Zakaria not report on his participation, he signed a non-disclosure agreement beforehand. Reed writes, "[W]e are left with the astounding fact that one of the war's crucial media proponents -- apart from Zakaria's ubiquity and sterling reputation as a foreign policy analyst, his is by far the most prominent Muslim voice in the press -- helped craft the arguments that Bush used to take the country to war. Then for 16 months leading up to the invasion, he wrote columns, edited news coverage, and appeared as an analyst on television putatively evaluating those same arguments for his vast audience. Naturally, Zakaria promoted the war relentlessly in every venue in which he appeared, though he never revealed his role as confidential advisor to the administration was never mentioned. Possibly his most memorable prediction was that, once Hussein was gone from Iraq, the price of a barrel of oil would drop to $10.
  • Currently Zakaria is not only a regular participant on the television news circuit, including a slot as a panelist on ABC's This Week a host of his own show on PBS, but he is even a favorite guest of the Daily Show's Jon Stewart, where he launches into uncharacteristic tirades against Bush and the Iraq occupation. Reed writes, "The assumption is that the pundit now 'gets it.' But it's possible that Zakaria has played it perfectly all along. When he couldn't afford to be labeled as a wimp or pacifist -- the kind of guy who Peter Beinart would use for target practice -- he made a 'looking at the bright side' argument for war: sure there are huge risks, but everything might work out beautifully. When it became clear that the occupation was not going to be a happy affair, he became politely skeptical. Now that the failure of the Bush presidency and the Iraq war are assured, he has found in the Daily Show a forum and a fresh audience for becoming a savage critic of those same people he secretly helped a few years ago.
  • As for his 2001 collusion with the Wolfowitz group, he now says he just didn't understand the purpose of the gathering. He says he mistook it for a "brainstorming session." Robert Kaplan, the only other real journalist present, was asked by the New York Times if that contention was credible. "No," he replied, "that's not possible."
  • Jeffrey Goldberg, a pundit and New Yorker columnist, followed the same procedures before the war as the now-vilified Judith Miller -- channeling propaganda and disinformation from the Bush administration and from Ahmad Chalabi's gang of Iraqi liars into the public eye. But unlike Miller, whose career is virtually in ashes, Goldberg is in fine journalistic fettle. Why Miller should go down while Goldberg thrives is a good question. His work was probably as influential as Miller's in persuading Americans that the war was necessary and justified, and he was just as enthusiastic as Miller about being a reliable source for Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. It was Goldberg who dutifully wrote a New Yorker "scare piece" (Reed's words) when the Pentagon's Douglas Feith wanted to launch a military strike against supposed Arab terrorists in Paraguay. As a result, the US built a big, lavishly expensive special-ops base there. Goldberg was also there to give his readers a Chalabi-sourced tidbit about Iraq's evil plan to eradicate 100,000 Israelis with secret bioweapons. Goldberg's infamous 2002 feature, "The Great Terror," helped fix the mainstream media's portrait of Saddam Hussein as, in Reed's words, "a genocidal lunatic with WMDs on hair-trigger ready to exterminate every hamburger-eating, freedom-loving person in the world. Both Bush and Cheney spoke approvingly of the 16,000-word article and singled it out as a good explanation why a war effort was justified. But the 'Great Terror' is a J-school nightmare: bad sources, compromised sources, unacknowledged uncertainties, and the whole text spun through with an alarmist rhetoric that is now either laughable or nauseating, depending on your mood. ...Goldberg floated sketchy theories that the dictator was working closely with al-Qaeda and was so irrationally villainous that he was developing a super-duper WMD from wheat mold that, in the author's words, had 'no military value [except] to cause liver cancer, particularly in children.' Needless to say, 'The Great Terror' hasn't aged well. The New Yorker hasn't made any retractions, but substantial parts of the article are simply hokum. The supposed al-Qaeda link, for instance, rested on the testimony of a drug dealer in a Kurdish prison. When a journalist from a major British newspaper tried to follow up on Goldberg's reporting he quickly determined the source to be 'a liar.'"
  • Like the other three on this list, Goldberg's career is flourishing. He is a staff writer at the New Yorker, one of the most coveted jobs in journalism. His new book is selling well, he won a prestigious National Magazine award in 2003, and his reprehensibly poor article, "The Great Terror," won an Overseas Press Club award. Goldberg is becoming "a bit touchy" about his dead-wrong prewar stance. When asked by New York magazine about his erroneous allegations about the links between Hussein and al-Qaeda, he shot back, "Is that part of the interview? Okay, fine, if you really want to go into it, the specific allegations I raised have never been definitively addressed by the 9/11 Commission."
  Reed contrasts some more liberal writers who have consistently been right on their predictions and commentaries about the Iraq invasion. Robert Scheer wrote, in his columns for the Los Angeles Times, that the administration was trying to "frighten the American people into supporting" it, and seeking to bypass rational discussion and analysis by making Saddam into a cartoonish "super-villain" -- in Reeds's words, "the kind of guy who sacrifices military strategy to give toddlers liver cancer. [Scheer's] work constituted perhaps the most full-throated anti-war voice on the editorial page of a major American newspaper." Scheer's reward for being right? He was fired in 2005 and his column was given over to another well-connected pro-war conservative, Jonah Goldberg. Scheer later wrote, "The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq."
• Conservative commentator William S. Lind is perhaps "the most prescient voice in the American media warning against the military dangers facing us in Iraq," according to Reed. A renowned military strategist, Lind warned before the invasion that occupying Iraq would do more to benefit al-Qaeda and Hezbollah than any other entity. He predicted, "When American forces capture Baghdad and take down Saddam Hussein, the real war will not end but begin...as an array of non-state elements begin to fight America and each other. ...It won't be pretty." He also wrote of the basic tenet of military theory is that a democracy cannot win any prolonged war if the people are at all uncertain about the reasons for fighting. At that point, prior to the invasion, more than half of Americans thought Hussein was involved in 9/11. Currently, Lind toils in relative obscurity, writing for the American Conservative and Web sites like Military.com, Counterpunch, and Antiwar.com. "I think we're probably going to hit Iran and that situation could be ten times worse than what we've got in Iraq," says Lind.
• Jonathan Schell is a veteran war reporter, who covered the Vietnam War for the New Yorker and, in 2002 and 2003, wrote for Harper's and the Nation, where he wrote that historically, any attempt to "impose" democracy from the outside and with an armed occupation is a fundamental error in understanding. Reed writes, "As he saw it, all the Friedmans of the world, in love with the audacious experiment of trying to turn Iraq into a beacon of Middle Eastern democracy, were off in the poppies. Democracy, by its nature, must originate with a popular movement, not a bunch of guys in wrap-around shades and Kevlar vests riding in on Abrams tanks. And, lo, the Bush administration has now leaked the fact that it's considering non-democratic scenarios to try to stabilize Iraq." Schell wrote a book in 2003, The Unconquerable World, which effectively predicted the disaster in Iraq and, as a result, was "savaged" (Schell's word) by the New York Times, which itself was involved in spreading disinformation through the pen of its then-star reporter Judity Miller. Schell writes for the eminent, but small-circulation, Nation, and says wryly, "There doesn't seem to be a rush to find the people who were right about Iraq and install them in the mainstream media."
• Unlike the others profiled by Reed, Scott Ritter is not a journalist, but an ex-Marine and a former UN and US weapons inspector with intimate knowledge of Iraq's weapons programs. Ritter was one of the few prewar voices that appeared in the mainstream media challenging the WMD fairytales of the administration, telling anyone who would listen that Iraq's arsenals had been destroyed shortly after the first Gulf War. As a result of being right, and being contentious about it, the armchair pundits of the mainstream media --Beinart is notable among their number, writing that Ritter had "no credibility" -- have done their best to mangle Ritter's reputation, even trying to push unsubstantiated child pornography and solicitation charges against him. But Ritter's book about Iran is garnering good reviews. And CNN's Wolf Blitzer, in an unusual moment of what Reed calls "journalistic accountability," recently told Ritter, "Your skepticism about the rationale of going to war with Iraq [was] widely ridiculed. You were harassed, to put it mildly, for your views at the time. A lot of those views turned out to be accurate, so you speak [about Iran] with some credibility." (Radar Online)

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